Ava (Gina Carano) and a local criminal (Amaury Nolasco) don't see eye to eye in "In the Blood." / Francisco Roman

by Brian Truitt, USA TODAY

by Brian Truitt, USA TODAY

Crying on cue is starting to become as second nature to Gina Carano as unleashing a barrage of punches to someone's face.

The former mixed martial-arts star continues to put an armbar on Hollywood with her most challenging acting job yet in In The Blood (in theaters Friday), adding to a résumé featuring her action-packed 2011 breakout role in Steven Soderbergh's Haywire and an integral part in last year's Fast & Furious 6.

Directed by John Stockwell, the indie action drama casts Carano as Ava, a newlywed who travels to the Caribbean for her honeymoon. When her husband (Cam Gigandet) mysteriously disappears after a ziplining accident and some foul play, Ava goes on a one-woman quest for vengeance to find her spouse that leaves a lot of broken bones and blood in her path.

Little do her wealthy father-in-law (Treat Williams) or a local hood (Amaury Nolasco) know that Ava was trained to fight tooth and nail to survive as a child by her father (Stephen Lang) - she shows off those moves in one hellacious bar fight where Ava takes out everybody, man or woman, who steps to her, and holds one poor guy hundreds of feet in the air from a zipline, a sequence filmed in a Puerto Rican rain forest.

While Carano's proud of all the fight scenes she's done, she doesn't think people understand how hard it is to reach a moment of strong emotion for an actress.

"All of a sudden, you start watching movies and you realize how many actors and actresses do this daily," Carano says. "But you see, 'OK, I like how that person becomes emotional' or 'That actress is an emotional mess in every movie and that must be exhausting.' It just opened my eyes on acting."

Carano, a 31-year-old Texas native and daughter of former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Glenn Carano, is a wanted woman these days: Filmmakers would like to have her presence in movies, and UFC women's bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey said earlier this month she'd be up for taking on Carano in the MMA ring. (Rousey herself is following Carano's footsteps into movies, starring in this summer's The Expendables 3.)

USA TODAY talks with Carano about In the Blood, having a movie wedding and what's next for her.

Q. After a few acting performances under your belt, what was special about In the Blood?

A. I had just come off of Fast 6 so when I did In the Blood it was a completely different production. It was a smaller budget and it was hard work being on every single day - I'm in almost every single frame of the movie. (Laughs)

I kind of like stuff like that. I like being able to be involved, and when you get on one of those bigger films, all the pressure is on everybody else. The pressure's on the stars of the show or the movie or the director or the producers, and they've got that much money they have to be responsible for.

But when you get on a smaller production, you feel more of the weight of the pressure and you're that much more passionate to make it go well.

Q. Did you feed off that pressure?

A. Yeah, I love that. Pressure focuses me.

Q. Is doing all the action and stunt work still more comfortable for you than the love scenes or the marriage sequence?

A. In the Blood actually opened me up to forcing myself to become a better actress. I really like the natural scenes. I like them more than the physical scenes right now because they're so new for me.

I've done the physical scenes so many different times and in different ways, but it's the emotional scenes and connection between two characters that I find really fascinating. I haven't really been able to do that a ton.

I have the stars in my eyes when it comes to expressing yourself on film, and that was one of my favorite things about In the Blood.

Q. Of the turmoil Ava goes through, what was the hardest for you to tackle as an actress?

John Stockwell came up to me and he was like, OK, what you feel if this person went missing out of your life and you were searching for him at hospitals and he didn't show up.

It was really interesting to get emotional and stay in those emotions while the cameras were rolling. Especially coming from a fighting background, you teach yourself not to show any emotion because then your opponent doesn't know where you're coming from.

With acting you want people to feel your emotion, but your instant reaction is to pull it back from everybody and to stay there while they change the camera angles. You feel very vulnerable and exposed to everybody in the room around you.

But at the same time, at the end of the day when you get done and everybody thanks you for sharing that part of you with them - like the cinematographer comes up and puts his hand on your shoulder and sympathizes with you - that was one of my best moments on film. That w as one of those days where I walked away and felt like I did that scene correctly. (Laughs) It was such an addicting feeling.

It was so therapeutic for me too. On that day, I felt like I knew what this life is about.

Q. Each hospital she goes to, you can see Ava losing more and more control of the situation. Getting to that point where you can just cry, was that difficult because it was so new?

A. It was hard and it felt like everything inside me was fighting that moment, and then finally I got there and then it was waterworks. But I just understood exactly what I was feeling and I wasn't able to hide behind a smile or hide behind being physical. I was having to be exactly who I would be at that moment.

That's when I figured OK, I want to do more stuff like that, whether it be in happiness, in sadness - I want to figure out how to access whatever I accessed in that moment. I feel like that's good work.

Q. Of the fight scenes you have in In the Blood, is there a favorite?

A. I didn't get to do preproduction for this movie because I went straight from London (doing Fast 6) and two days later I was in a bride's dress and getting married to a co-star I'd never met. (Laughs) I worked every single day, so there was only one or two days we'd actually get to train for fight scenes.

Pretty much I would show up to set, look at what they had and then I would use anything around me. It's a very raw film and you have to really watch out when you're doing fight scenes that it's not overchoreographed, it looks believable and at the same time entertains people.

We would sometimes just make it up on the spot. For this movie, it just kinda works. You don't get hair and makeup every 15 minutes for when your hair goes out of place and it's not a L'Oreal commercial. It's just a rough raw movie.

And we did the ziplining all ourselves. The first time I ziplined, I've got someone hanging and screaming - I'm scared to death, and I'm wondering if this person's acting or if they're really that nervous. (Laughs) Then you've got to give lines while you're out there on the zipline, and John Stockwell's like, "Go 15 more feet out!" Then you go 15 feet more feet out and you forget all your lines because you're scared.

I don't know many actors who would do what we did for this movie. And we actually did it - there's no green screen or hanging off of 10-foot wire.

Q. Ava's father taught her how to fight. What life lesson did your dad teach you?

A. What my dad has given me is how to be an intense hard worker while keeping your moral compass. My dad's been in everything from pro football to being the CEO of hotels. He's in charge of a lot of employees, but one thing I've always liked about my dad is he's always remained the same person. He never treats anybody differently, whether somebody's sweeping the hotel floor or serving coffee.

He's just really excited and positive about life, and that's a hard way to be. (Laughs) To have responsibility and power and not abuse it and still remain who you are, if I can be anything like that is what he's given me.

Q. Was it trippy to see yourself in a wedding dress on some level since you're not actually married in real life?

A. (Laughs) It was so weird! I was standing in my trailer in this wedding dress looking at myself like, "Oh my gosh, this is not how I saw it going." I did not think I was going to be in a wedding dress for the first time in my life in a trailer and faking it.

My little sister's actually getting married so at least I can say, "Hey, well, I've got some idea."

Q. What's next for you - fight or movie?

A. There are a couple of movies we're in negotiations for that shoot in the summer that could be really good opportunities. In a perfect world, I would love to really find a character that's impacting and tell a really beautiful story sometime in my life.

When it comes to fighting, it's not something I'm going to go and put myself back into. I worked so hard to get where I'm at. It has to be the right circumstances, then I would actually be open to it. I wouldn't do it for any other reason but that it would be something I wanted to do, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I could do it.

Q. Wearing a wedding dress seems better than somebody trying to beat you up. But that's just me.

A. I know what fans want, I know what people want, but I'm always going to remain true to myself as much as possible.

I want to do work that I'm proud of, and by the time I hit 80, I want to look back at my life and I want to have substance and know that I did things that maybe everybody else thought I was insane for doing at the time but that I knew I had to do and had respect for myself in doing.